Meaning & readings
liver, pluck, nerve, chutzpah
On’yomi カン
Kun’yomi きも
Origin
This character combines the flesh radical 月, which identifies it as a body part, with 干 on the right as a sound hint showing roughly how to pronounce it. The liver, being an internal organ associated with courage and determination in traditional thinking, became linked to meanings like "pluck" and "nerve" — the idea that your liver contains your boldness. The character's shape reflects both what it names (a body part) and how it sounds in Chinese-derived speech.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 7
- Kangxi radical
- 130
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1118 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+0809D